There’s a tension at the heart of Agile leadership that doesn’t get talked about enough.
Some things are so central to your value proposition that they should never be sacrificed for efficiency. But some of the things we protect most fiercely have quietly stopped delivering value, and we just keep doing them anyway.
Getting this wrong in either direction is costly, so an effective leader needs to know which is which.
The Popsicle Hotline: Protecting What Makes You Special
In The Power of Moments, Chip and Dan Heath describe a hotel with a red phone by the pool. Pick it up, and someone will bring you a popsicle, on a silver platter, for free.
Is it the most cost-effective way to deliver a cold treat? A cooler full of popsicles costs a fraction of the labor. But the popsicle hotline isn’t about the popsicle. It’s about the moment. It’s the thing guests remember and tell their friends about, the experience nobody forgets.
Agile leaders need to recognize their own popsicle hotlines: the elements of their product or service that look inefficient on paper but are actually the core of what makes the experience remarkable. These are worth protecting, even when someone runs the numbers and suggests a cheaper alternative. Replace the red phone with a cooler, and you’ve optimized the cost while eliminating the magic.
Southwest Airlines: A Cautionary Tale in Disguise
For decades, Southwest Airlines’ open seating policy was a genuine differentiator, perfectly aligned with their “fun, low-cost, no-frills” brand identity. It wasn’t just a quirky feature; it was part of who they were.
In January 2026, that ended. Southwest moved to assigned seating, projecting the shift would generate $1.5 billion in annual seat revenue. Newsweek called it plainly what it was: a money grab. Loyal customers largely agreed, with many describing the change as a betrayal of the airline’s founding identity and threatening to switch carriers.
The practical rollout hasn’t helped. Because Southwest’s fleet was designed around open seating, assigned seats created unexpected overhead bin chaos that the airline is now scrambling to fix. But the bigger problem is the one that’s harder to fix: Southwest now looks like every other airline. The open seating policy was one of the last remnants of founder Herb Kelleher’s egalitarian vision. Whether the revenue numbers justify losing that distinctiveness is a question Southwest’s finance team will answer one way, and their most loyal customers are already answering another.
The Real Challenge: Telling the Difference
This is what makes the judgment call so difficult. A core differentiator and a stale “we’ve always done it this way” can look identical from the outside. Both generate complaints. Both attract skeptical questions from finance. Both feel uncomfortable to defend in a board meeting.
The difference is whether the practice is still actively creating the value it was designed to create, and for the customers it was designed to serve.
Making that call well requires three things.
First, clarity about intent. What value was this practice, policy, or feature designed to deliver, and for whom? You can’t evaluate whether something is still working if you never clearly defined what “working” looks like, or who gets to decide.
Second, honest and ongoing measurement that looks at the right things. Southwest had data showing customer dissatisfaction, but revenue pressure can quietly shape which data gets centered in those conversations. Measuring whether something is still creating value is different from measuring whether it’s the most profitable path forward. Both matter, but they’re not the same question.
Third, the courage to protect things that are genuinely worth protecting, even when they’re inconvenient. That’s often harder than the courage to change things, because the pressure to optimize is relentless and it usually comes dressed up in very reasonable-sounding language.
What Agile Leadership Actually Looks Like Here
True agility is about staying intentional, constantly asking whether the things you’re doing are still the right things to be doing, while also holding onto the distinctive elements that make your value proposition real.
Two topics worth returning to regularly:
Is this still delivering the value we intended, for the customers we most want to serve? If not, what needs to change?
Is this one of the things that makes us genuinely special? If so, how do we keep it from being rationalized away?
A cooler full of popsicles is more efficient. A red phone by the pool is more memorable. Knowing which one you’re holding, and being honest about what you’d lose by replacing it, is one of the most important skills an Agile leader can develop.